Citrix has a great culture. We truly embody the work hard, play hard attitude. Promotions are tied to performance for the most part, although you do have to meet some baseline time-frames as well (typically you need to wait at least 18mo since your last promotion).

Cons

There is disconcerting trend where management is focusing more on the present performance and making decisions in a very reactive manner. In the past, we seemed to be a much more forward-thinking company.

Advice to ManagementAdvice

Stop being so reactive to minor fluctuations in the present. We need to make decisions based on long-term goals.

The work environment is "fun". Lots of free food, lots of junkets, lots of little perks meant to boost morale. It's good place for middle-aged tech folk in the hump of their careers with mortgages and young kids, not hugely demanding intellectually and pretty flexible as far as offsite and flextime work goes. This is a place to start off a career for a year or two, or to take a 2-3 year break from the normal demands of higher-functioning tech companies in the Valley. Not a place to hang your hat for more than a few years, or you will lose your skill-edge and you will become demoralized. Or you can just be a mediocre stale "lifer" and enjoy the free food and drinks and call it a career. The Santa Barbara location is the best place -- it's the core of the intellectual chops of the company, and the overall vibe in SB is really quite nice. Santa Clara, or Florida -- not recommended.

Cons

Very poor leadership. Almost fickle to the point of childish. Upper management is treated as if they could change course at any minute, and at great cost to potential salary upgrades, bonuses, and desperately needed new hires, quick and rash "gut, from-the-hip" decisions by the CEO and his ilk has affected Citrix quite negatively. Frequent re-orgs are a given. This happens at every well-capitalized huge company to a certain degree -- at Citrix it's the rule, not the exception. There is absolutely no incentive to innovate or change processess. Innovation happens solely through acquisition, and that process is also poorly managed. Integration of newly acquired products into existing lines is an engineering nightmare -- nobody vets the acquisitions at a technical level and engineering is just expected to make it all work. A lot of B-School narcissists in the VP rank who drink the Kool-Aid of "technical fungibility" without having the slightest clue as to how their products are actually built, or work. A lot of "magical thinking". I marvel at the stock value of a company that really is just a conglomo-cluster of disparate acquisitions. The products themselves -- with the exception of the GoTo boondoggles -- are bug-riddled with very little effort invested in usability.

Advice to ManagementAdvice

Scale back acquisitions and do a thorough clean-up and audit of existing management and initiatives. Put forth a management vision that has executional legs, not just a bunch of slick-sounding slogans and buzzwords that dodge accountability. In English: have the balls to put yourselves and your people to account. There's way too much deadwood up and down the chain.